http://www.winbeta.org Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:10:03 -0700 http://www.winbeta.org/images/WinBeta/images/logo4.gif http://www.winbeta.org Betas News and Reviews http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20629 Microsoft has released a new version of a software tool that developers and administrators can use to harden older applications against common vulnerabilities.

Short for Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, EMET version 2.0 brings several new protections to operating systems and applications such as Windows XP or Internet Explorer 6, which remain widely used even though they are not as secure as more recent releases...

View Full Article: The Register]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20628 At Microsoft's Mix '10 conference in March, where Microsoft took the wraps off its HTML 5 vision for Internet Explorer 9, there were a lot of questions about the future for Silverlight.

Six months later — and one new version of Silverlight (version 4, released in April) later, those questions still persist. Should Web developers target Internet Explorer 9 or Silverlight when creating new Web and mobile applications?

View Full Article: Mary Jo Foley's Blog]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20627 Google is celebrating the second anniversary of its Google Chrome browser with the release of new stable and beta versions, bringing an even cleaner and simpler user interface and increased speed and performance.

As the Google Chrome Blog points out, Chrome 6 is years beyond where most imagined browser technology when it was first introduced just two years ago...

View Full Article: ReadWriteWeb]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20626 Intel will release on Thursday an upgrade to its parallel development toolset for Windows application developers, adding both a tool to walk developers through parallelism, as well as support for Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 IDE.

Intel Parallel Studio 2011 is an update to Intel Parallel Studio. It aids developers in building parallel C++ or C applications for multicore or multiprocessing systems. "It's a suite of four products that work on the developer lifecycle, including designing, building, verifying and tuning," said Bill Savage, vice president and general manager of the Developer Products Division in Intel's Software and Services Group...

View Full Article: InfoWorld]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20625 In the future, there will only be artistically designed dust and massive smartphones.

Microsoft took groups of journalists around its “open house” set up at Sydney’s Luna Park yesterday after announcing further details of Foxtel on Xbox Live and the exact date of the Kinect launch in Australia. The open house was intended to showcase Microsoft products of all types against an introductory speech that talked about the products of the future. Microsoft’s future, to be precise...

View Full Article: Gizmodo Australia]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20624 Virtualization has not stripped Windows of its relevance, a Microsoft official said in response to VMware CEO Paul Maritz’s argument that operating systems are no longer the center of innovation in the IT world.

Maritz didn’t actually predict that operating systems are doomed, but he did argue in his VMworld keynote that the role of operating systems in managing hardware and providing services to applications is being usurped by virtualization software and new development frameworks like Spring and Ruby on Rails...

View Full Article: Network World]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20623
View Full Article: Windows Team Blog]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20622 Arc Touch Mouse, and shot this short video. The Touch folds flat, to about the same size as an HTC Touch phone. Where the old Arc Mouse fit well in a front pocket, the Arc Touch will do well in a back pocket. The folding portion of the mouse has 90 articulated pieces and snaps to a very solid feeling and natural arc...

View Full Article/Video: Channel 9]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20621 Join us live at 9:00 AM Pacific Time on Thursday, September 30, 2010 for a virtual, interactive roundtable discussion on migration strategies, standards, and support for organizations moving from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8...

View Full Article: Windows Team Blog]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20620 Let the mobile video-game wars begin. No, not Nintendo vs. Sony, but Apple vs. Microsoft.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs this morning announced the iOS Game Center, a new video-game app and software platform that will help developers of games for the iPhone and iPod touch introduce features including centralized achievements, leaderboards and, most notably, real-time multiplayer gaming between devices...

View Full Article: Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20619 Microsoft just received confirmation of a patent that hands the company the intellectual property of shutting an operating system down.

[...] In August 2005, Microsoft filed for a patent to more efficiently shut down its Windows operating system as well as other operating systems, including Apple’s Mac OS X, and override running programs that may prevent Windows from closing. That particular feature has been implemented for some time in Windows and is known as the notification screen just before the actual shutdown, if a user has requested Windows to close and other programs with open and unsaved documents are still running...

View Full Article: ConceivablyTech (via Slashdot)]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20618
Improvements coming in November include...

View Full Article: Microsoft Partner SMB Community Blog (via The Register)]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20617 Paul Maritz is no ordinary former Microsoftie. As a high-ranking executive in the 1980s and 1990s, he was right behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, responsible for Windows and other top Microsoft products, and at the center of some of the company's biggest competitive rivalries and controversies.

In other words, if he were still at the company, he would have been in the middle of Microsoft's decision to take out a full-page in USA Today this week, urging customers of VMware not to lock themselves in to a three-year contract with the virtualization technology company...

View Full Article: Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog ]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20616 Dell has been relatively quiet about its modular data-center products, but on Tuesday it showed off a new design it has started selling to large "hyperscale" customers, which include big Internet firms like Microsoft and Facebook.

The first modular data centers, including one shown by Dell two years ago, used standard shipping containers to house servers and other IT gear. The containers are sturdy, relatively cheap and highly portable, but some vendors have found them a little inflexible...

View Full Article: Computerworld]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20615
View Full Article: Microsoft PressPass]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20614 Last year, in the run-up to the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft rewarded early adopters with a series of discounted upgrade offers. And then, as quickly as they appeared, those deals vanished.

But if you’re willing to wait a month or so, one of the best of those deals is about to make a triumphant return. Beginning October 3 in the U.S., you’ll be able to buy the Windows 7 Family Pack, which gives you three upgrade licenses of Windows 7 Home Premium for an estimated retail price of $149.99. (Typically, online retailers discount that price by 10 bucks or so.)

View Full Article: Ed Bott's Microsoft Report]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20613 Google is no longer the software vendor with the highest percentage of unpatched critical and high-risk bugs as of the first half of this year: IBM now ranks first.

After Google and another as-yet unnamed software vendor challenged IBM's findings that showed Google with the most unpatched critical and high vulnerability disclosures, IBM revised this data set found in its IBM X-Force 2010 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report, which it released this week...

View Full Article: DarkReading]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20612 Security Advisory 2269673 on August 23, we've continued to conduct an investigation not only into our own affected products, but also into how we can best help to protect customers given DLL preloading also affects some third-party applications. We'd like to provide an update on our investigation...

View Full Article: Microsoft Security Response Center]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20611 Microsoft co-founder's patent litigation against Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants.

Asked about the lawsuit during a video interview with Bloomberg News, Wozniak says he's "not at all against the idea of patent trolls," and he believes Allen's suit represents the fact that inventors have rights under the U.S. patent system...

View Full Article: Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog]]> http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=20610
View Full Article: Ars Technica]]>